Latest news with #MissileDefenseAgency
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Uncertainty Over AN/TPY-6 Guam Missile Defense Radar Emerges
In January, the U.S. military moved to halt work on the new AN/TPY-6 radar, one of seven key elements of the huge new air and missile defense architecture taking shape on Guam, and its current status is now unclear. This underscores other important, but still unanswered questions about the plans to better protect the extremely strategic U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific, including the total personnel required and which services they will come from. In a memo to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) on January 7, then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks directed the termination of all further development of AN/TPY-6, according to a report the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, published last week. Hicks left the post President Donald Trump took office later that month, being succeeded first by Robert Salesses (in an acting capacity) and then by Stephen Feinberg. At least as of December 2024, what is currently being called the Guam Defense System (GDS) was expected to eventually consist of seven core components. In addition to the AN/TPY-6, these included: an array of ground-based missile launchers based on the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS), SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors to go in those launchers, Mk 99 fire control systems (which includes AN/SPG-62 radar 'illuminators'), a Guam-specific version of the Aegis Ashore command and control system (the Aegis Guam System), and the Guam Command Center (GCC) facility. A single prototype AN/TPY-6, a Lockheed Martin design derived from that company's AN/SPY-7 Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska. Other components, including smaller radars and shorter-range interceptors, could also be part of the final GDS configuration. However, 'other than system experimentation efforts, further development of the AN/TPY-6 radar shall be terminated,' Hicks' memo said, per GAO's report. 'The MDA shall prioritize remaining Aegis Guam System development funds toward delivering minimum viable Aegis C2 [command and control] and datalink capabilities to enable Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) engagements off remote tracks from AN/TPY-2 and LTAMDS over the JTMC [Joint Track Management Capability] bridge.' The AN/TPY-2 is an existing ground-based air and missile defense radar primarily associated with the U.S. Army's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile defense system, but that can also be used as a stand-alone sensor. The LTAMDS (Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor) is a new radar that the Army is working to field now, primarily as an upgrade for the Patriot surface-to-air missile system. 'The Joint Track Management Capability (JTMC) bridge' refers to command and control upgrades intended 'to address the full set of PRC [People's Republic of China] missile threats to Guam and to achieve a Joint Tactical Integrated Fire Control (JTIFC) capability for coordinated battle management, combat identification, and electronic protection,' the GAO report said, also citing Hicks' January memo. Hicks also called on MDA to 'retain the single AN/TPY-6 panel currently on-island, with all associated flight test equipment, and maintain it in its current form as an experimental asset, with potential to develop for operational use within the GDS architecture in the future,' according to GAO. GAO's report does note that 'a DOD official told us these changes in the then-deputy secretary's classified memorandum are not binding on the new administration,' but does not say whether or not Hicks' directive with regard to the AN/TPY-6 was subsequently reversed. No further details about what may have prompted the move to terminate work on the radar are provided, which does not appear to have been previously disclosed. The AN/TPY-6 was used, without any reported issues, during the GDS' first live intercept of a surrogate ballistic missile last December. That test also marked the first time the radar had supported an end-to-end live-fire engagement. TWZ has reached out to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, MDA, and Lockheed Martin for more information about the current status of the AN/TPY-6. Even if the immediate decision to axe the AN/TPY-6 as part of the GDS has been reversed, the fact that the U.S. military had moved to cancel it still raises questions about its future and the broader plans for vastly expanding air and missile defenses on Guam. The overall focus of GAO's recently published report was to highlight serious ongoing uncertainty around personnel and other infrastructure requirements for the new defensive architecture, which is set to make the skies over and around the U.S. island territory some of the most heavily defended airspace on Earth. 'DOD has established organizations to manage the deployment of GDS and designated lead services for sustainment and operations,' GAO's report noted. 'However, DOD lacks a strategy to transfer responsibilities to their lead organizations. As a result, DOD risks schedule delays for the deployment of GDS elements and incomplete plans for organization, training, personnel levels, and facilities, among other things,' according to GAO. 'Moreover, although the Army officially joined JRM [the Joint Region Marianas] in February 2024, the Army has not identified its long-term strategy to advocate for construction priorities and installation support from the other military services. Without a strategy, the Army may continue to face delays in approval of construction projects and risks deploying additional personnel without installation support services in place.' MDA has projected in the past that the 805 personnel will be needed to support GDS by 2027, and that the figure will grow to 1,044 by 2031, but 'senior military officials told us the draft statement is just a benchmark for the military services, because the services still need to validate and fund those requirements,' per GAO. 'Since planning for GDS began in fiscal year 2022, DOD has not fully identified the required number of personnel or completed a deployment schedule for GDS units.' GAO said disputes between the Army and Navy over roles and responsibilities for certain components of the GDS that were resolved late last year had been a factor. The table below shows the lead entities that have been in charge of developing each of the system's seven core components, as well as Army recommendations for managing the operation and sustainment of those elements in 2023, and the final decisions that then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks made in November 2024. All of this has cascading impacts on work to build new infrastructure to support the GDS. The recently published GAO report also highlighted the still seriously limited infrastructure currently available to the Army's Task Force Talon on Guam, which operates and maintains a THAAD battery on the island now, despite those forces having been in place since 2013. As it stands now, GAO says the goal is for the first elements of the GDS to be deployed by Fiscal Year 2027, which aligns with previous statements from U.S. officials, and the complete system is scheduled to be in place by Fiscal Year 2032. Any significant delays to that timeline could have larger ramifications. Since 2021, expanding air and missile defenses on Guam has been a centerpiece of larger U.S. military efforts to reorient itself to preparing for future large-scale conflicts, especially a potential high-end fight with China in the Pacific. Guam is a vital hub for U.S. air and naval operations in the Western Pacific. It is also an important location for staging ground forces for onward movement across the region. In turn, being able to adequately protect key facilities on the island, including Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam, and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, especially from a growing array of Chinese ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic threats, is seen as critical. Various tiers of drones are also a real and still evolving threat. Guam could be a target for other adversaries, as well. Concerns about increasingly longer-range North Korean ballistic missiles prompted Task Force Talon's initial deployment more than a decade ago. The GDS plans also reflect the U.S. military's persistent preference to focus on expanding active air and missile defenses, together with new distributed concepts of operations, over improved passive defenses, such as building new hardened aircraft shelters. Critics, including members of Congress, have been increasingly warning that not investing in additional hardened infrastructure puts American forces at significant risk, particularly if a high-end conflict in the Pacific with China were to break out. U.S. officials have made clear that they do expect to have to fight from places like Guam while under attack in any such scenario. You can read more about this heated debate, which TWZ has been following closely, here. Whatever the fate of AN/TPY-6 radar might be now, the U.S. military still clearly has significant work to do in finalizing its plans for ensuring Guam is as shielded as possible from growing air and missile threats. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Report: No clear strategy for maintaining Guam missile defense
Despite being a central part of the U.S. military's strategy in the Pacific, there still isn't a clear strategy for maintaining the missile defense systems on Guam. That's according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which found that different military services have not fully determined when they will take over sustainment for missile defense equipment. The report, 'DOD Faces Support Challenges for Defense of Guam,' also found specific requirements for sustainment and operations means other aspects including training and the exact number of personnel needed still are undetermined. 'DOD does not have a strategy that includes a timeline and a plan for determining when and how the lead organization — the military services or [Missile Defense Agency] — will assume responsibility for operating and sustaining those elements,' the GAO wrote. 'MDA officials noted that they will fund sustainment of the systems they are developing for Guam until they fully transfer operations and sustainment to the military services.' In addition, the Army reported to the GAO that it is waiting on the Defense Department to designate who will lead both missile defense operations and sustainment before it can finalize its own personnel plans for Guam. The Guam Defense System, or GDS, is the planned network of interceptor batteries, missiles, radar systems, early warning sensors and command positions aimed to be set up on Guam. The idea behind it is that the system will create a 'persistent, 360-degree defense' around the island and its many U.S. military installations. Currently there are plans for 16 sites around the island for this, a scaled-down version of previous ideas. Those are set to be put in place between 2027-2032, and according to a Congressional testimony this month, the project will cost approximately $8 billion. The U.S. military's challenges in sustaining the GDS also carry over from current drawbacks. Currently the island is home to a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense or THAAD missile battery (which includes a radar system). The GAO's audit found that even after a decade of the battery being deployed to Guam, the Army is struggling to care for it, as it lacks its own infrastructure and instead must rely on the Navy. That includes having limited storage space; during a typhoon in 2023 the Army had to ask the Marine Corps for hangar space to keep the battery out of rough conditions. The island's location and military infrastructure had made it a central player in the shifting U.S. Pacific strategy. Alongside reviving World War II-era airbases, the military is moving units to Guam and building it up as its main defense bastion in the region. As such it is aiming to make it able to defend against peer-level threats. The Navy's 7th Fleet also provides naval support for the island. Other challenges include a clear deployment plan for the GDS. The GAO found that the Pentagon has 'not fully identified the required number of personnel or completed a deployment schedule for GDS units.' The Army, the report notes, cited confusion and dispute over what service will be in charge of GDS maintenance and operations. In its report, the GAO made three recommendations, calling on the Department of Defense to determine specific personnel requirements so support infrastructure can be built, to provide a long-term plan for the Army to 'integrate with bases in Guam' and for a clear timeline to be set for transferring missile defense sustainment responsibilities to relevant military branches. Army to eliminate 2 Security Force Assistance Brigades, reassign experienced soldiers Why the Army's new XM7 rifle reignited a debate over volume of fire Air Force delay on separation and retirement orders isn't 'stop loss,' defense official says F-35's close call over Yemen raises questions about how it's used An Army unit's 'extreme use of profanity' was so bad, they made a rule about it
Bloomberg
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Guam Defense System Facing Delays, Planning Problems, GAO Says
The Pentagon's plans to deploy a new missile-defense system to protect Guam are faltering because of organizational lapses, a congressional watchdog said. The Government Accountability Office said the Defense Department risks delays in establishing the Guam Defense System due to a lack of strategy for transferring control from the Missile Defense Agency to the military services. The Pentagon also hasn't laid out staffing levels and a schedule for service members to deploy to Guam to manage the system.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Factbox-What is the Golden Dome missile defense shield?
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump picked a design for his Golden Dome missile defense system and named a leader of the ambitious $175 billion defense program. Here are details on Golden Dome, where the idea comes from and how it will work. HOW WILL IT WORK? The aim is for Golden Dome to leverage a network of hundreds of satellites circling the globe with sophisticated sensors and interceptors to knock out incoming enemy missiles after they lift off from countries like China, Iran, North Korea or Russia. "I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack," Trump said when he made the announcement on Tuesday. In April the Pentagon asked defense contractors how they would design and build a network to knock out intercontinental ballistic missiles during the "boost phase" just after lift-off - the slow and predictable climb of an enemy missile through the Earth's atmosphere. Existing defenses target enemy missiles while they travel through space. Once the missile has been detected, Golden Dome will either shoot it down before it enters space with an interceptor or a laser, or further along its path of travel in space with an existing missile defense system that uses land-based interceptors stationed in California and Alaska. Beneath the space intercept layer, the system will have another defensive layer based in or around the U.S. This is something the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency looked into during the first Trump administration. IS GOLDEN DOME LIKE ISRAEL'S IRON DOME? "We helped Israel with theirs, and [it] was very successful, and now we have technology that's even far advanced from that," Trump said referring to Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. The short-range Iron Dome air defense system was built to intercept the kinds of rockets fired by the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza. Developed by Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. backing, it became operational in 2011. Each truck-towed unit fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats like rockets, mortars and drones in mid-air. The system determines whether a rocket is on course to hit a populated area; if not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly. Iron Dome was originally billed as providing city-sized coverage against rockets with ranges of between 4 and 70 km (2.5 to 43 miles), but experts say this has since been expanded. HOW IS IT SIMILAR TO THEN-PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN'S STAR WARS INITIATIVE? "We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland," Trump said on Tuesday. The idea of strapping rocket launchers, or lasers, to satellites so they can shoot down enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles is not new. It was part of the Star Wars initiative devised during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. But it represents a huge and expensive technological leap from current capabilities. Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative," as it was called, was announced in 1983 as groundbreaking research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. The heart of the SDI program was a plan to develop a space-based missile defense program that could protect the U.S. from a large-scale nuclear attack. The proposal involved many layers of technology that would enable the United States to identify and destroy automatically a large number of incoming ballistic missiles as they were launched, as they flew, and as they approached their targets. SDI failed because it was too expensive, too ambitious from a technology perspective, could not be easily tested and appeared to violate an existing anti-ballistic missile treaty. WHO WILL BUILD GOLDEN DOME? Trump ally Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner alongside software firm Palantir and drone maker Anduril to build key components of the system. Many of the early systems are expected to come from existing production lines. Attendees at the White House press conference with Trump named L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin and RTX Corp as potential contractors for the massive project. L3 has invested $150 million in building out its new facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where it makes the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Satellites that are part of a Pentagon effort to better detect and track hypersonic weapons with space-based sensors and could be adapted for Golden Dome. But Golden Dome's funding remains uncertain. Republican lawmakers have proposed a $25-billion initial investment for it as part of a broader $150-billion defense package, but this funding is tied to a contentious reconciliation bill that faces significant hurdles in Congress.
Globe and Mail
21-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
RTX's Arm Wins a $1B Contract to Aid Standard Missile-3 Program
RTX Corporation 's RTX unit, Raytheon, recently secured a $1 billion contract involving the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block missile. Work related to this contract will be performed in Tucson, AZ, and Huntsville, AL. Details of RTX's Deal Per the terms of this deal, RTX will procure and deliver up to 55 SM-3 Block IB All-Up Rounds that are manufactured, assembled and tested in accordance with the SM-3 Block IB specifications. This contract is projected to be completed by March 31, 2031. The award has been provided by the Missile Defense Agency, Huntsville, AL. What's Favoring RTX Stock? With countries worldwide enhancing their defense capabilities, spending on advanced military weapons, including missiles and missile systems, has been rapidly increasing. RTX, as a prominent manufacturer of missile systems, has thus been benefiting from this trend in the form of a steady flow of orders. The recent contract is an example of that. Notably, RTX's SM-3 interceptor is a powerful defensive weapon used by the U.S. Navy to target and destroy short to intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Its 'kill vehicle' strikes incoming threats with the force of a 10-ton truck moving at 600 miles per hour. The program has more than 30 successful space intercepts. Such strong capabilities and performance must have enabled the company to deliver more than 400 SM-3 interceptors to the U.S. and Japanese navies, which reflects the solid demand it enjoys in the missile market. RTX's Growth Prospects Rising military conflicts and border disputes have led nations to increase their focus on national security, particularly on missile defense systems, in recent times, backed by the rapid development of advanced missile technologies over the last decade. This is likely to have prompted the Mordor Intelligence firm to forecast a compound annual growth rate of 5% for the global missiles and missile defense system market during the 2025-2030 period. Such massive growth projections offer a strategic advantage to RTX, which has a handful of combat-proven missiles in its product portfolio, like the TOW missile, Guidance Enhanced Missile, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, Tomahawk, SM- 2 and a few more, in addition to the SM-3. Prospects for RTX's Peers Other defense companies that are likely to enjoy the perks of the expanding missiles and missile system market have been discussed below: Northrop Grumman NOC: Northrop Grumman provides high-speed, long-range strike weapons like the AARGM-ER, which is a supersonic, air-launched tactical missile system. It also develops and builds advanced missile defense technology, ranging from command systems to directed energy weapons, advanced munitions and powerful sensors. The company's long-term (three to five years) earnings growth rate is 3.3%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NOC's 2025 sales indicates year-over-year growth of 2.8%. The Boeing Company BA: It manufactures various missile defense systems, including the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense and Avenger. Boeing-built missile defense systems have been protecting its customers for nearly 25 years against threats ranging from intercontinental ballistic missiles to hostile aircraft. The company has a long-term earnings growth rate of 17.9%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BA's 2025 sales indicates year-over-year growth of 25.6%. Lockheed Martin LMT: Lockheed Martin's missile defense program includes the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense air and missile defense programs. It also manufactures the Multiple Launch Rocket System, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and Javelin tactical missile programs alongside other tactical missiles. The company has a long-term earnings growth rate of 10.5%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for LMT's 2025 sales indicates year-over-year growth of 4.6%. RTX Stock Price Movement RTX shares have risen 13.5% in the past six months compared with the industry 's 10.1% growth. RTX's Zacks Rank RTX currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Zacks Names #1 Semiconductor Stock It's only 1/9,000th the size of NVIDIA which skyrocketed more than +800% since we recommended it. NVIDIA is still strong, but our new top chip stock has much more room to boom. With strong earnings growth and an expanding customer base, it's positioned to feed the rampant demand for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Internet of Things. Global semiconductor manufacturing is projected to explode from $452 billion in 2021 to $803 billion by 2028. See This Stock Now for Free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report The Boeing Company (BA): Free Stock Analysis Report Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT): Free Stock Analysis Report Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC): Free Stock Analysis Report RTX Corporation (RTX): Free Stock Analysis Report
